Di Di
by allan
Summary: Sutch is dead, and a guest has a wish-test. (first of five parts)
1. Default Chapter

Sun–warmed wind in his hair riding home from a funeral, a strong-running bike beneath him and a well-looped bimbo behind old enough to… well!  Was Tinker happy to be alive?  Was he buggery!

For one thing Di Di, busy blowing his street cred by trailing streams of bubbles, wasn't Tinker's bird.  For another she was barely hanging on and twittering non-stop.   "… pretty bubbles in the air… "she sang, slightly off-key, "… then like my dreams, they fade and die… "

Tinker groaned.  How did he get suckered into this?

#

Dave, better known as Screaming Lord Sutch, had sunk deeper into depression after his mum died two years before.  He'd reached the end of his rainbow-coloured skipping rope, you might say, and that's where his girlfriend found him hanging.

Tinker had ridden to the service at St. Paul's church in Harrow to pay his respects.  Teddy boys, rock 'n rollers, bikers, and raving loonies of every stripe were in attendance to say goodbye to their hero.  He bumped into Red the Ted, in full drape 'n drains, and Shirl who was poured into leopard-skin pedal pushers to match the armbands that were de rigueur for mourners.  Dave's leopard-skin boots and top hat sat on his coffin, all filled with flowers.

"Just the lad," said Ted, thick, borstal-tattooed fingers taking a vice grip of Tinker's lapels.  "See here Tink, need a bit of a favour like."

Favours were obligatory for silverback simians in steel toe-capped brothel creepers.  Tinker put it on the mental slate.  "No problemo, Red."

#

Yeah, that'll be right, thought Tinker, trying to keep a grip of space-case and handlebars at the same time.  Shirl had found the girl wandering aimlessly after the service remembering only her name, and taken Di Di under a buxom wing.  Red's word might be law within the sound of Bow Bells, but Shirl's will was absolute within earshot.

"Take 'er to your place, Tinker," she coaxed.  "I know she'll be safe with you."

"Yeah, 'cos you got no dick." laughed Red around a Capstan full-strength. "I'll find out where she lives and send someone by later."

Tinker sighed, and bowed to the inevitable.  The fuzz would have bundled her off to the nuthouse or detox—if she was lucky.  Not everyone at an important funeral is there to mourn; not all vultures have wings.  When great eccentrics grind to a halt, the shock waves attract psychics like moths to a flame and some get toasted.  

#

            Somehow he got her home without major incident, put on the kettle and found some suggestive digestives.  He stuck Di Di in the comfy chair and set a three-G holding spell while he made the tea.  Dear old Sutch had been a real tea-jenny, even carried an emergency stash of his favourite leaf everywhere.

            Tinker snuck looks from the kitchen at his jail-bait guest as he fixed a tray.  The half of her head that wasn't covered with long, multi-coloured hair was tattooed, only they seemed to change with her mood.  The psychedelic fey rags under her jacket weren't so much clothing as clouds of colour, shimmering and shifting like the borealis.  He slapped absently mindedly at another art noveau butterfly; she kept conjuring the damn things out of thin air.

            "Ah, milk or sugar?" prompted Tinker, distracting her from a psychedelic reconfiguration of the Persian carpet.

            Di Di turned an eye, blue and innocent as a robin's egg, on him; pity the other was green as a sea-sick shamrock.  "Yak ghee, bee's gold, coca leaf?"

            You don't ask the delirious for decisions; she got two heaped and a shot of moo in her Earl Grey.

            She held the mug with both hands, they were mainly skin and dirt, breathing in the rich steam.  "Bergamot," she said brightly.  "I like fairies, but you're not one either."

            "I have friends in the Fey," Tinker admitted cautiously.  He couldn't place Di Di yet and he was getting one of his bad feelings.  "Do you have any friends you'd like to call?"

            Kaleidoscope eyes went misty.  "I used to have so many friends, everybody loved me.  Change can be such an old meanie."

            But sits at the right hand of Necessity, thought Tinker, before whom even gods must bow.  She looked like she could use a good friend and lots of T.L.C.  Net tights that fish had apparently chewed their way out of, cheap leather jacket and slashed tie-dye tee with an anaemic-looking pierced nipple peeking out.  Talk about green fruit for the picking, no wonder Shirl had gone all clucky.  

"Happens your luck will change," he encouraged.  "Fortune's wheel was made round to roll."  He spun a biscuit towards her across the tea table.  "See, already you've met me.  I'm a real friendly guy."

A sudden hardness glittered in her green eye.  "Not like that," Tinker added hastily. "I'm old enough to be your father."

Di Di looked at him with interest, then shook her head, scattering more little butterflies.  "Not you, maybe nobody—do you have, like, parents?"

Cripes, no friends, no family, Tinker was a softie for stray dogs.  "My dad was a gypsy, moved on when I started school.  Mum died in my teens, on my tod ever since."

Di Di was feeding her biscuit crumbs to the iridescent butterflies.  "I had a doggie once—lost him, not dead like Bonzo."

Bonzo.  Tinker felt a constriction in his chest.  He'd fallen in with Bonzo when they were both on the street: abandoned, cold, hungry, even the same age.  But punchy bull terriers age seven times faster than lost boys.  If there was a dog heaven, Bonzo would be waiting there yet, faithful as Greyfriar's Bobby.

"Either way, you lose a bit of yourself," he agreed.  From where he was sitting it looked like she'd lost more than her dog.

"Now it's getting all sad," sniffed Di Di.  "Should I go away?"

"No, please stay," urged Tinker, mindful of Red's temper.  "I don't often get company here and there's a ride coming to take you home in a bit… ah, you do have a home, don't you?"

Di Di looked at him sadly.  "No ruby slippers."

Tinker groaned into his tea; no milk, no sugar, like his luck.  "Okay, where did you sleep last night?"

"Don't sleep, silly."  Di Di looked at him with all the pity teens reserve for their out-of-it elders.  "Don't get all old and yucky.  Don't end."  She chewed a black-rimmed nail.  "That's what happened to my sweet little Sutchie, isn't it?"

Tinker's eyebrows shot up, he was getting that bad feeling again.  "It's not easy being old and crazy," he said, slipping off his faux leopard-skin armband.  "Dave won't be jumping out of the coffin this time around with a burning top hat and toilet seat around his neck, screaming 'They're coming to take me away, ha-ha'."  On stage or on the hustings it was always 'Vote insanity. You know it makes sense'.

Di Di smiled.  "I remember we had fun running up Downing Street protesting… something."  

Tinker recalled that stunt.  One lord and five naked ladies; only one of them wasn't, not even close.  Oh, and they were protesting the insufficiency of decent rock 'n roll on the BBC.  Sutch always seemed so irrepressible, sad to think he despaired at the end.

 Di Di frowned and the butterflies turned into bittens.  "It's not very nice when sisters steal your boy friends, is it?" 

"Ah, you got siblings then?"  Tinker asked casually, hoping they lived in London with a car and phone.

Di Di concentrated, her hair braiding and unbraiding itself.  "Three brothers and three sisters, only one's a maybe."

Tinker cheered up.  "Nothing like family around when you're out of sorts."

"We're what you'd call dysfunctional," Di Di added brightly.  "Aren't riddles fun?" 

 Before Tinker could respond, she started.  

"No fun at all -- depressing

Too much fun -- depraving

Fun over now -- demising

Once all fun was -- my devising"

Tinker didn't like riddles; they were often tests of magic with prohibitive failure rates.  He didn't like big brothers either; they tended to get the wrong ideas.  

The good news was he could figure this riddle--that was also the bad news.  Despair, Desire, Death, and ever since something went terribly wrong with their younger sister, Delirium.  He was a trespasser in the pantheon of the Endless.  Tinker took a deep breath.

"My lady, if I guess aright

T'were more yourself, I'd find Delight."

Di Di clapped her hands.  "Now you must have a wish for being so clever; but be careful, they're slippery as a fish."

A large tropical sunfish, somewhat pop-eyed at its own sudden appearance, whirred sedately around the room like a blimp.  Its tiny glittering scales kept flipping over to make pointillist pictures and every one of them advertised temptation.  Tinker was just recovering from a Brough Superior 'Golden Dream' when the billboard scales rippled again and he was staring at a naked …  Tinker glared at Di Di.  "Young lady," he said sternly, "becoming your sometimes sister becomes you not."

            The sunfish went up like the Hindenburg and, anticipating arson, Tinker grabbed for the teapot.  Di Di scowled, and the halibut-sized inferno winked out before it could singe the carpet.

            "It's only flesh," she pouted, grabbing a hank of hair and pulling it out by the roots.  "Isn't it just for pleasure or pain?"-- Another tear of hair-- "Which is meant to be fun again?"-- Another scalp lock.

            Tinker jumped to his feet.  "Ace the retard act and quit stimming already," he shouted.  "You've freely partaken of food and drink in my home.  Guests, great or small, take on obligations of behaviour."

Di Di gave him an appraising stare, and Tinker glared down at her, not daring to flinch.  She was the most unpredictable of all the primary personifications; split-personalities usually are.  Di Di was innocence all fucked-up; she was also more powerful than a runaway reactor and unlikely to play by any rules.  

            The moment stretched and Tinker was wondering if it was too late to throw himself at her feet.  

Then she smiled, and it was like the dawn coming up.  "Sometimes I need telling to stop.  I keep trying to be like my big sisters 'cos I forget who I am."

Tinker's testicles descended cautiously and mental muscles relaxed the six-pack on his forehead.

"Maybe I need a mean old daddy…"-- Tinker's sphincter snapped tight shut-- "… someone to look after me."  She dipped her biscuit in the tea and nibbled thoughtfully at it while looking up at him.

Neither matrimony nor paternity held any appeal for Tinker, certainly not with delirium tremens here.  "No offence kid," he said gently, sitting down again, "but that wasn't the wish I had in mind."

Di Di brightened up.  "Your wish, I nearly forgot."  She placed a fingertip either side of her forehead.  "I know, how about…"

There was a big puff of blue smoke, and Magic John stood in the doorway.  Tinker stared.  John smelt of clean clothes and after-shave, he wasn't even smoking and appeared completely sober.

"It's like this, Tinker," he said with unaccustomed sincerity, "I couldn't have asked for a better apprentice in the art and I've been thinking, well, of offering you a partnership."

Tinker half rose out of his seat, eyes bugging out, unable to get his breath.  The laughter, when it broke loose, was uncontrollable and left Tinker gasping.  He was rubbing the tears from his eyes, when the image before him blurred and shifted.

"Hoi! wot's all this bollocks then?"  The real John was far more convincing with a Silk Cut nailed at the corner of his mouth.  "Wish fulfillment fantasies on the holo-deck or what?"  Then he noticed Di Di, and his manner changed abruptly.  He pulled up his stained tie and put out the ciggie, on Tinker's plate.

"Ah, delighted to make you acquaintance, Miss.  I hope Mickey Mouse here hasn't been taking any liberties."  John looked from her disordered clothing to Tinker, who was bristling at the suggestion of impropriety.

"Who rattled your chain?" Tinker demanded.

John looked from him to Di Di, then a slow smile spread across his unshaven face.  "Well, how about that, summoned by the Endless.  I must be dreaming—I mean delirious."

Di Di wrinkled her snub nose at him.  "I was only playing.  See, Tinker won a wish but it's not to be big daddy or for girls or anything nice… so I thought of you."

"Dammit, I was hoping Red had sent you to get Di Di home," said Tinker.  "Shirl felt she needed protecting, there were a few Unseelie hanging around at Sutch's funeral."

John laughed.  "Lucky devils, she'd have turned them into pink snowflakes"

Di Di pouted.  "Don't talk about me like I'm not here.  Besides, I can't leave till Tinker gets his wish, can I?"

They both turned to him.

Tinker was sweating.  Bad enough that he had to choose a very tricky wish from a notoriously schizoid personification, but there stood John just waiting for him to muff it.  He took a deep breath and opened himself to inspiration.  

Serendipity came in the unlikely form of Iain, Pict ancestor and live-in familiar.  Iain usually chose axe-strokes over words, but wasted neither.

"My times were hard, but knew delight,

A man might tell the black from white.

Now all is lost in tones of grey

And maddening is the modern way.

With delirium all must grope and feel

For none may tell the false from real.

If wish were mine, the choice is plain,

Delight to know herself again."

Di Di rose from the chair—and kept on rising.  Gone were the cheap rags and punk coiffure; naked as a newborn babe she floated in the air and her smile lit the room.

"Well wished," Delight said.  A rainbow arch formed in the doorway and she glided towards it.  "Bye now, I'm off to show my brothers and sisters while your wish lasts."  Her form became insubstantial, but before she faded completely, Delight turned and blew a kiss to Tinker.

"Not too shabby for a sorcerer's apprentice," muttered John, watching the colours blend together into pure white light then fade away.  "But don't let it go to your… "

Tinker wasn't listening.  He sat slumped in the easy chair with an expression of mindless bliss stuck on his face.


	2. Perchance to Dream

**          "**Christ!"  Tinker jerked, nearly twitching his bike off the road.  Road, what road?Pitch dark and a mist coming in had slowed him to a crawl.  No wonder he must have dozed off after miles of this.  Damned if he could remember where he was going either.  

This is nuts, thought Tinker.  Where the hell am I anyway?  He wasn't drunk and would've been able to tell if someone had slipped him a dose.  Sure he'd had mild concussions, but never blackouts before now.  Talking of which…  

The headlight was fading fast and the engine began to falter.  Tinker switched off the beam and the motor picked up a bit.  There.  Now he could see a faint light ahead and not too far.  Just as well, the engine had started missing again.

Tinker made it to the driveway of a large house, then had to start pushing when the bike finally quit.  What a gothic pile, he thought, parking the bike and catching his breath.  The Vee was a tad over five-hundred and fifty pounds dry weight after all, and the driveway had seemed impressively long.  Rocky Horror or what?  Tinker mused.  If a rouged-up pouf comes to the door in bustier and garter belt, I'm outta here.

The great door was part open and by its light Tinker noticed flanking stone sentinels.  The nearest was an incredibly realistic gryphon, so superbly carved Tinker could make out each individual feather.  He reached out a hand…

"That would be most unwise, stranger," said a cold voice.

Tinker stood six foot two in his sweaty socks but he was looking up into a pale, almost cadaverous face that emerged from a floor-length black cloak.

"Either you're Dracula or I'm bloody dreaming," muttered Tinker.

A shock of spiky black hair shook with silent mirth.  "Which would my guest prefer?" he asked, ushering Tinker in with an imperious gesture.

Tinker caught his reflection in a mirrored hat stand.  Sleep-tousled black locks, beard, and…  Hell's bells! he realised, I'm starkers.  On the other hand he was relieved to see the other's reflection too.

"Many sleep thus," said his pale host.  "However you may have any attire you choose, Mr. O'Toole."

Tinker's reflection now showed a smart set of Langlitz leathers and Dayton boots.  "That's Tinker to my friends," he said gruffly--true names shouldn't be bandied about anywhere.  "Yourself?"

"Oh, I think you can guess."

Tinker could, unfortunately.  Who else would occupy a castle in dreamtime but… well, the Dream Wight himself.  Oneiros to the Greeks, who had a word for everything, Morpheus to the Romans, and way out of Tinker's league in any language.  

"To what do I owe the honour, Lord of Dreams?"

"You lately assisted my youngest sister with… ah, a personal problem," said the man, who wasn't.  "I wish to express my gratitude."

Tinker blushed, uncomfortable with praise.  "Weren't nuffin," he mumbled.  "It was just my lucky wish, Di Di did it all herself really."

They'd come into a reception hall, the whole place was like something out of Cocteau's "La Belle et Bett". The intricately carved walls virtually dripped ectoplasm, flickering candles chased scuttling shadows.  Tinker wouldn't want to be here alone.  

His host indicated three ornate doors.  "Modesty becomes a neophyte mage," he said solemnly.  "But you could have used that wish for your own ends—it would appear my family is in your debt."

Christ almighty, thought Tinker, not again.  A wish from the Endless is worse than a curse.

The Dream Lord motioned him forward to the first door.  "Few may choose where the royal road leads, fewer wake to find their dream come true."

Tinker looked askance at the door.  He wasn't a game show fan, but go find a magician that isn't curious as a cat.  He found his hands reaching for the handle and turning it.  Just a peek.

"Jeez, a McLean wheel."  A six foot silver ring rimmed with black rubber stood in the bare room.  Kerry McLean, the Michigan madman—well, what else would you call someone who rode inside a monowheel with a polished alloy Olds V-8 engine in his lap?  And what would you call a man who lusted after one of those monstrosities?—Tinker!

Tinker became aware of a faint humming and noticed that nothing was holding the perfectly poised wheel up.  A gyro, he realised.  Of course, that would stop "gerbilling", the nemesis of monowheels that tries to spin the rider under heavy acceleration and braking.  The ultimate special, right here and road ready.

And a bloody sight more stable than me right now, thought Tinker.  Desire urged his twitching hands to grasp the bars and claim this beauty for his own.  He had to force them to close the door instead.

His long pale thinness was waiting.  "It would appear your will is not a subject of my other sister," he observed.

Tinker looked at his shaking fingers.  "Yeah, I guess, sooner 'roll-my-own' when it comes to kicks.  "

The Dream Lord permitted himself a thin smile.  "If you are beyond the material plane, you might be mindful of the next door."

Tinker shrugged, never let 'em see you sweat.  He could handle this, only a bleedin' dream after all.  

The door opened at his gesture and Tinker entered to find himself facing a full-length Victorian tailor's mirror on a wheeled stand.  It wasn't so much in a room as a cave.  He came closer stared at his reflection; it wasn't him.  Only, it was: thinner, older, long and white of hair, taller somehow.  He was wrapped in a full cloak that seemed made of shifting mist and sparkles, his staff was the lightning.  Tinker could feel power beating on him as from an open tanning coffin.  His reflection addressed him, the words ringing clear as hammer on anvil.

"Great am I, yet still to be.

The choice, as always, rests with thee.

Bow low the Fey and science despair

Before our works, if you but dare."

Tinker stared, eyes bugging out of his head.  The big golden apple dangling within his reach--to be the Magus Supreme, power itself.  It was to become a god.

A thin hand emerged, rippling the mirror like a stone cast into mercury.  Its nails were mandarin-long, knuckles unscarred, gone the ingrained oil and calluses.  Destiny reached out for him, trembling with potential.  Men sell their souls for less.

Gasping, his back to the other side of the door, Tinker shivered from the effort.  If it wasn't there to lean on, he would have fallen down.

A wan face regarded him speculatively.  "What man resists the power of his own will?  Either I lose labour or you have the makings of a mage without any aid."  A long, pale finger emerged from his night-black cloak and pointed at the last door.  "But are you really so pure of heart?"

The door opened on its own.  Tinker was ready for Marianne Faithful peeling out of her leathers, he wasn't ready for…

"Jean!"  

The tears were already on his cheeks as he lurched forward--as she threw herself into his arms.  No ghost; solid, real, here and now, and in their old room.  Like the bad stuff never happened, like it could be again, all of their dreams.  She was his bonnie Jean, first and only true love, torn from this life like the child from her body.  His child, dammit, and her too in love with a roving gypsy to trap him into marriage.  He'd had to lie low for a bit and never knew till it was too late; not too late to feed that fucked-up abortionist ground glass though.  Never really been anyone else, nothing beats first love.

Tinker held her out at arm's length, barely able to breath.  Jean, still twenty-one and fresh as a bright May morning—unfortunately he was September, okay, October, now.  In her clear young eyes love brimmed over, but it was his own reflection Tinker saw the clearer.  

He backed away, each step an agony of regret; it was like walking against a river of his own blood.  Jean's arms reached out from the past, hurt and confusion suffused her, but Tinker knew what he had to do.  He made it to the door, but for the life of him couldn't close it in her face.

The Dream Lord gave him a strange look.  "Orpheus himself could not have done that.  Methinks my works are all overthrown and twixt sleep and awake but a void.  Is there naught within my power to give you?"

Tinker strove to compose his face, and it took a couple of tries before he could master his voice.  He got on his toes and whispered in Dream's ear, never once taking his eyes off Jean.

The lifeless face broke into a smile of understanding and the Dream Lord nodded quietly to himself.

#

Outside dawn was just breaking.  Tinker absently-mindedly stroked the gryphon as he left and was rewarded by the rough lick of a stone tongue.

The Super Vee started first kick and its headlight pointed the way home.  Tinker waved goodbye as the Dream Lord raised a long, pallid arm in salute.  By him stood a radiant Jean, and at her side Tinker—twenty-five years young and grinning like a bastard.  Youth is so shamelessly wasted on the young.

Tinker rode away into the sunrise of a waking world.  Sadder, wiser, but never too old to dream.


End file.
